Chapter Text
Many years ago, from dirt and spite alone a great evil was brought into the world... In the form of a greedy man, he suffered through his life and grew an ambition and hatred larger and greater than even the lordliest of lords. He studied and mastered the art of necromancy through the power of the elements, born from the earth and raised by men he dove into the complexity of the people's desires, imbued their negative emotions and created more beings from the dirt. His kin, his army, but still, made from the same material as himself and raised with the same hatred, even the shame, vengeance, wants, despises, rudeness' and angers from men were not enough to bring life forth. His creations stood immovable, lifeless for weeks on end, no progress made. Frustration.
Out of rage and desperation he dove deeper into magic books and incantations, curses, and hexes, diving head first and burring himself in the dark magics, driving everyone away, until he finally got it. For humans had come from dirt but in their veins there was water and there was fire flowing, boiling, and through their lungs air flew in each breath and through their bodies lightning coursed. They were a conglomerate of elements, not just a singularity. Brilliance.
And so... he took his creations and buried them in the pits of fire and soon emerged monsters, with human emotions, ambitions, minds, but unlike humans they were lacking. They were his kin but weaker becoming but the perfect soldiers to rule over, guide into battle. Then... he raised his armies into the mountains and struck them with the light of the sky giving them life and flight. These too were similar to men but also fairly distinct. Among his soldiers a trusted few went beyond and above his expectations, with special powers they gained through the necromancers magic, becoming then generals and officials above the common Lava and Stone soldiers.
It was like this that the two armies at his disposal were formed, but still it wasn't enough, he wanted more, better bigger more destructive his ambition had no bounds, and he was willing to go anywhere, do anything if it would get him the power to destroy with no bounds.
He started researching on how to make his monsters grow in size, strength, magic... he created bigger lava monsters, lighter stone harpies, thinner, faster, smarter, deadlier, and still his thirst for power was not satiated. He wanted the biggest, the greatest, a monster that no one would stand in the way of, he wondered, how much power he needed, to turn and entire mountain into his warrior of destruction and so he gathered it.
Creating the forbidden powers was the last step, with those, he could summon a storm of dark magic and lightning energy capable of making a being so powerful even the kingdom's most fierce warriors would quiver at the sight of it!
At least that was the plan until that old hoot and his stupid friends decided to ruin his plans, Merlock and his merry gang did all in their power to stop his army. It was a long and gruesome fight, the more stone monsters the wizard's magic would incapacitate the more lightning he would summon to bring them back, it eventually became too much and the lava monsters came into his aid. But even that wasn't enough. Fuck.
Eventually Merlock was able to defeat his armies, not without help, and incase his soul into a magical book.
Because the monsters were also a part of his magic, once trapped, his armies fell into a deep slumber. King Albert and Merlock made sure to spread what stone warriors remained through the land far out of Knighton, in the eventuality that any of them woke up they would be far enough of the kingdom to constitute any sort of threat. They did the same with the forbidden powers for they did not know how they worked or if they could even work if not wielded by the necromancer. The lava monsters could not be moved however, since, after they fell asleep, their bodies temperatures became so high it cause the land to transform into a fiery nightmare land. King Albert crossed said land out of the map and forbade anyone from stepping foot in it, for their own safety. And the book of Monstrux was kept in the possession of the royal wizard, for he was the only one capable enough to keep it save, Merlock however didn't plan to merely keep it save, he wanted to know, to learn the reason behind the necromancer's power... well, one thing the good wizard hadn't been wary of was that the said power had grown in such a way that a simple magic book could not keep it inside without any consequence...
It was far too dangerous to leave it anywhere but on his presence, so Merlock had kept it in the royal castle, inside the royal library. However, soon employers and other members of the royal lineage started experiencing symptoms akin to evil curses, cases of bad luck, personality shifts, headaches out of the ordinary, panic attacks, hallucinations and all sorts of macabre things. They found that the source of those hexes seemed to be none other than the book of Monstrux, the closer they were and the longer they stood by it the worse the symptoms they were feeling became and the more frequent as well.
The staff took these claims to the King who sought Merlock to fix this issue.
"Remove that book from my castle at once!" he demanded.
Merlock however couldn't just get rid of the book, so he conducted an experiment. 5 employees of the king stayed, willingly, inside the library, in direct contact with the book, during an entire week, with the promise that if any of the symptoms appeared the experiment would be terminated and the book would be destroyed. Meanwhile 5 others would take the week off, away from the castle and the book. What ended up happening was that among 10 people the symptoms that had been plaguing the castle a few days prior only happened to one individual, and he was among the 5 people instructed to leave the castle for a week. This disproved the theory that the strange occurrences were happening because of the book, and indeed they never happened again after that day. Merlock explained to the King it had been merely a coincidence.
A little bit of coercion never hurt anyone... King Albert was satisfied and Merlock could keep protecting the book in his personal library. Only, the book that sat on his library was a fake. In order for the experiment to dissuade everyone's worries, allowing Merlock to have more time to find a solution, to succeed, the book in the castle had been a fake. The real book was taken to the forest just outside the capital, where Merlock could work unbothered. This little trick had to be done in order to put everyone's minds at ease...what they didn't know couldn't hurt them. And if he had to give someone a mild headache for a week in order to forge results that was a small price to pay wouldn't you agree?
Now he had the proper time and place to start his research. He couldn't've just allowed the King to destroy the book, who knows what would have happened, maybe he would've been successful and destroyed all of that glorious knowledge, or maybe he would be most unfortunate and instead of destroying it he would release it's power. Merlock couldn't allow that either.
Just south of Bookingham sat a land filled with magic! A different sort of magic... It was a beautiful green agglomerate of meadows and trees, in between a walls and walls of vegetation. Animals would frolic around, bathing on the rays of sunshine that cut through the leaves. It was a sight only seen in dreams. King Albert had been most joyful when observing such a place, soo close to the capital, to his castle, where he could take his darling daughter. In the middle of all of that stood a little quaint wooden house, where the wizard made a tiny study. That time, around the outside of the shack, just noticeable from a few days prior, the grass was wilting away...
"oh dear..." he had to act fast, in order to maintain all of this power in a way it would not cause such harm to it's surroundings.
He could not begin to think about throwing any of that knowledge away, he was human after all and not flawless, becoming specially greedy when it came to topics of the academic nature. Even if the price to pay was one bigger than he could afford. He got to work.
The first couple of experiments involved magic barriers and buffers, some squire bots volunteered to help him with his tests, unbeknownst to them however, the condition of their termination, or reprograming once the experiments were done. No barriers or buffers were enough to contain the books powers. A different approach got him to to cast curses of his own into different books in order to figure out how to contain said curses, but it ended up becoming a waste of time. None of his own curses were anywhere near the same level of dark magic he needed to deal with. However, this last experiment had given him an idea. He did not wish to destroy the power within the book of Monstrux, however it was not such a bad idea to sever it and divide it. If he could somehow transfer the power of the book into separate files, he might be able to buffer them with a simple spell.
"Eureka!!"
It had taken a couple of weeks, but finally, after removing certain elements of the book of Monstrux, he was able to transfer them to already cursed books. The negative energy had become some sort of glue to the necromancer's essence. It had been however too late... the disease going around the concoct hovel had spread too far, the plants, the animals, the trees started dying, the sun shone no more, the forest had absorbed a great amount of magic that had been let out with the transference of powers from the evil books. That amount of evil had damaged the gentle nature of the magic forest turning it into a dark dead wasteland of former vegetation, only surviving the trunks of the tall trees that once held such joyous sights.
He had told the King such a tragedie had been a result of some evil witches curses that had been jealous of such a place. He told him once he had found out he had done anything in his power to stop it but it had been too late. That however hadn't been a lie, once he realized the damage that his experiments had cause he had done everything he could, he had exhausted himself to the bone trying out healing spells, buffer spells, growing spells for gardening purposes, he had called upon the forces of nature, he tried using the dark magics as well, he had gone through every single possible solution on his library to try and fix the problem. Nothing worked.
He then made up a story about a evil witch he had banned onto the Waste Lands, a small reminder of his long lost love, a bit melancholic, his exhausted brain couldn't be blamed at that point for the reminiscing. That had started the "trend" with the King, for banishing criminals to the Waste Lands as the highest form of punishment in the Kingdom: "Let the witches wrath ruin them in such a way my dreams have been ruined before".
And so, with much sacrifice, the 12 books of evil were born, with a simple magic spell all of the former effects these caused were completely annulled. Book of Anger, Book of Betrayal, Book of Creativity, Book of Cruelty, Book of Deception, Book of Destruction, Book of Envy, Book of Evil, Book of Fear, Book of Greed, Book of Vengeance and finally, the book of Monstrux. Except, it wasn't quite the book of Monstrux anymore not without the severed fragments. What should it be called then?
From Hill Country, news of torched animals and burned house incidents became more and more frequent, it turned into such a problem that the King had send Merlock himself to find just what was the cause of such occurrences.
It had been but a couple of days since the Dark Woods incident, so the King was overly paranoid that some unknown invented evil witch was set on causing havoc on his province. It wasn't as if Merlock couldn't resolve the kings worries without being found out on his lies. So he took the mission, determined to fix every and all issues that could be caused by an "evil witch", that did not exist, in order to provide some other source of relief.
After getting the book of Monstrux' current form, even though without a name yet, he had managed to translate but one chapter. He assumed it one of the most obscured ones from Monstrux' memories since the enigma behind the protection of such knowledge had not been the most well thought out of. Unfortunately, every thing else, ever other chapter, from each of the books, was filled with completely indecipherable information. So he took what he had. With his new found powers, taken from the unnamed book, he thought it a good opportunity to test his improved spells, from the little information he could manage to decipher. Most of those powers had been destructive ones, but curiously enough they did not seem to work on any beings but magical ones...
The journey to Hill Country had been a short one, just north of Port he had managed to take a glimpse at the peaky mountains, usually filled with green scenary and a tinge of white powder on top, now covered by a crymson aura and a black veil of smoke on the dark sky.
Nothing could've prepared him for the sight he saw, for in the valley that was once etheral in it's frozen beauty, a recently formed lava land, depleted to chaos and destruction all thanks to none other than Monstrux's monsters.
But how could this be? Merlock was sure all of the creatures had turned back to stone, how could they move around without any magic of their own?
No matter, he had a job to do, and before the King could learn of this incident he had to find a way of neutralizing the creatures. He threw them spells and water, but no matter how much magic he used the flames would not die. Slowly more and more creatures would mindlessly attack him back, until he was forced to retreat.
Hidding behind a rock, trying to catch his breath he finally notices a soft glimmer comming from his bag. Monstrux was glowing. Curiously he oppens the book and find the text he couldn't previously decipher forming pages with blank spots, information on creatures that were missing... missing? The monsters? Did the book wanted to see the monsters?
It was one of the worst ideas he's ever gotten, but it beat slowly dying to monster attacks without any chance of victory. He also knew that the book in his hands wasn't complete so the chances that his actions would lead to the return of his worst enemy were lower. But not zero. Regardless he was wasting time and if he could not beat these creatures on his own (which he could not other wise) there was a chance they would reak havock uppon the kingdom.
Merlock prepares for the worst as he jump away from the rocks he was hidding behind, luckly avoiding incoming fire attacks. He sprints close to one of the creatures and opens the book, and suddenly a light stronger than any of his fireworks is seen. The book glows bright as it sucks up every monster within it's range inside of it.
And then... nothing. It w-worked?
Merlock turns the book and witnesses it's pages filling up. Accurate and detailled descriptions of the monster's phisiology, powers and weaknesses. Amazing.
His wonder doesn't last for long as more explosion are heard nearby. He flips the pages and surely, more monsters are missing. Now he knows what to do. There was still a chance things could go really wrong if he were to completely fill the book, but now he couldn't just not do it, for curiosity's sake. It'd alwasy been his shortcoming.
Despite atleticism not being one of his stronger suits, he managed to scower the entire mountain rage that had been damaged by the fire, and capture every single monster in the vacinity. At least from his knowledge, after all the book had been filled.
Unfortunately, the same could not be done to the fire damage, low on stamina as he was, he still tried to cast ice and snow spells. But the lava was too deep into the mountains, and the temperature was too high all around, even a creek he saw on the was was boiling. He suspected there was some sort of magic mixed in but he'd have to study the extente of the effects later.
Back in Kighton the King congratulated him on his victory and lamented the loss of the mountain range (more like a third of it). 'there are things not even Merlock can do.' The jab didn't quite go past him, but soon Halbert would eat his words. Excused and annoyed he made a be line for his tower.
Deep within his study, what better place to keep this new secret - as close to his person as possible. After all if there was anyone capable of protecting the Book of Monsters in Kighton, he was them.
Little did he know his hubris, would be the exact origin of his downfall...